


Looking Back

by Savageseraph



Category: 300 (2006)
Genre: Ancient Greece, Blow Jobs, Grief/Mourning, Historical, Honor, M/M, Soldiers, Storytelling, Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 17:21:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savageseraph/pseuds/Savageseraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spartans do not kneel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brandil](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=brandil).



> Written for the Yuletide 2007 Holiday Fic Exchange. [](http://brandil.livejournal.com/profile)[**brandil**](http://brandil.livejournal.com/) provided the following prompt: _They say the Spartans fought so fiercely because they were protecting their lovers. Give me one or two couples and how they felt fighting and dying against Xerxes._ Many thanks to [](http://caras-galadhon.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://caras-galadhon.livejournal.com/)**caras_galadhon**, Best Beta in the World.

Everyone knows the story of King Leonidas and the three hundred who died and denied Xerxes the satisfaction of making them kneel before him. A great king would have known that Spartans do not kneel. I tell every man, woman, and child this when I tell them their story. I do this for Sparta. I do it for honor and pride and remembrance. I do it because _he_ asked it of me, because he was my king. Because he was my shieldmate.

Spartan lines are impossible to shatter. We protect our brothers and know they will do the same. We do not think about this or consider how the man next to us might fail. We know his heart, his body, as well as we do our own. We know he will not kneel. We know he will not surrender. We know that if we die with him, we will die gloriously.

There was not a man among us who went with Leonidas on his "walk through the countryside" who thought he would survive. We went because it was the only thing a man of honor, a man who valued strength and freedom, could do. The rocks where we camped were cold. Slick with sea spray. Bitter with salt. We took our rest in spots sheltered from water and wind and huddled in knots of two or three. No one remarked on this any more than they did when the cloaks we pulled over ourselves for cover stirred, when soft groans were muffled against a brother's skin.

Only Leonidas sat alone.

He brooded over a small fire in the depths of the pass. Some of the men glanced back, but none went to him. Not even the younger ones who watched him with shining eyes. They had grown up with tales of his bravery. He was to them at once desirable and barely more human than the monsters that moved against us. I could have told them that he was a man like any other, but I did not. Instead, I went to him.

There were no words spoken between us when I sat by the fire, stirred sparks from it before adding a little more kindling.

After a stretch of silence that went on long enough for the awkwardness of it to mellow into something close to comfortable, he said, "Spartans do not kneel."

I frowned slightly at the fire. "We do not. There is not a man among us who does not know that."

He grunted, nodded, poked at the fire.

I had always been the one gifted with a glib tongue. He spoke through his actions. Silence stretched out longer, and I studied him, searching until I finally understood the question he did not ask with his words. "Surely, there can be no wrong in one choosing to kneel before one's king." I slid off the rock I was sitting on, knelt, and rested my hand on his knees.

He released his breath in a soft sigh, parted his legs. "It is not a sign of weakness." He shifted, parting his legs, letting me move closer.

I nodded, not trusting my voice as each breath drew his scent into me. His legs pressed tight against my sides as I took him into my mouth and put my clever tongue to good use. If my movements were less familiar than those of his queen, they were sufficient to draw groans from deep in his chest.

His fingers carded through my hair, tightening each time I swallowed, but he tugged me back before he'd finished. I made a soft sound of disappointment that might have shamed me if he were any other man. His fingers traced my jaw. "Kneel."

I was already on my knees, but the firm tone of command, the dark promise in his eyes, made me shiver. I turned from him, pressed my cheek against a bedroll that smelled of sweat and leather and blood, spread my legs and bared myself to him.

His touch was firm as he stretched me. There was no wooing, no gentle coaxing. He rode me hard. There were no endearments, no promises we knew we would not be able to keep. I bit down on my forearm as each thrust brought a rush of pleasure and pain, bucked back hard against him when his fingers curled around my cock and stroked me. By morning, I ached from his use, but it was good. It made me feel alive, and men in battle need that. It is important when death is near. The more strongly men feel their lives coursing through them, the more fiercely they will fight death.

It is not such a strange thing. All know that Aphrodite and Ares are close bedmates. Passion for life. Passion for battle. They twine together like ivy hugging an oak. Enough that men who returned from war cast longing looks at their shieldmates when their wives were not about. Many did more than look.

I could have been happy with weeks of dealing death by day and letting him warm me by night. We did not have even a single week before he ordered me to leave. To turn my back on battle, on a glorious death. To return to Sparta. To remember.

It is the only time I argued with him. I was whole. I was able. I was ready to die, and he asked me to live. "They must remember, Dilios," he told me. "Your gift with words will ensure that. I can trust this to no other."

It is the most difficult thing anyone has ever asked of me. Walking away from glory, from him, was the hardest thing I have ever done.

I left with a token for his queen, but no whispered words of love. There was no need to give voice to the truth of their bond. To me he gave four golden coins stamped with his image. They were no more special than any other coins of the realm save that he had carried them. Two I tossed into a cold lake whose black waters are said to run into the Styx. Payment to the ferryman for passage across that dark river. The other two I keep wrapped in a square of wolf pelt that I cut from his cloak. Now, when my fingers brush against any fur, I ache with loss and longing.

It was not just the deeds of a king that are burned into me. It is the feeling of his fingers digging into my hips and pulling me back hard onto his cock, the sound of groans as he shuddered toward release, the flash of dark fire in his eyes before he thrust into me, the taste of his sweat and come.

When I left him before the final battle, I looked back, strained for sight of him as long as I was able. I have never stopped looking back.

I don't think I ever will.


End file.
